Oddfellow

A polishing mop on a cordless will probably be like trying to shine an elephant with a spectacle lens cloth. Get all the dirt off first. Don't polish dirt. River scum is easily dissolved with brick acid. This can also be useful for removing brown staining. Leave it to work and refresh regularly. apply with a soft hand sweeping brush if necessary using a diluted solution. It's EASY to burn GRP using a polishing mop. Always keep the mop damp: use a spray bottle with water to achieve this spraying wither the mop or boat. DO NOT GO HARD, you can burn or even abrade the gell too much. There are special mops for different jobs. There are different grades of Farecla compounds. G3 is good. G6 for harder work, Like other abrasives, best to work through grades. It's not a finishing compound. I would suggest UV Polish to finish. The biggest problem with gel coat is colour. The simplest stuff to handle is Plastic Padding Gel Coat Filler. If you are working with crazed gel coat, LEAVE IT ALONE. you will not solve the problem by playing with the gel alone. If you're working with chips, smooth the edges before application. Have some acetone to hand for clean up and mistakes.

abso-bloddy-lutely. You can't hire a boat anywhere else in the country to my knowledge cheaper than you can on the Broads. In 2019, you would have been charged £35 for an hour in a Dinghy with an outboard in Stratford Upon Avon with a cruising distance similar to a postage stamp and a queue as long as your arm. In Windermere, its £38 for an hour on a quality electric boat and a maximum of two hours hire. Not dissimilar on the Thames at Kris Cruisers either. Some of these commenters don't have a clue as to just how inexpensive it is around these parts when you compare to other areas.

Having spoken to Simon, the owner, this morning, I can confirm that the Bikes are NOT permitted anywhere near the bridge. They will be instructed to go to Bridge Broad. As for people commenting on the cost, give it a break. If you don't want a bit of fun on the water, don't hire one. There will be plenty of people keen for a go and £25 for an hour's fun is nowt. After being couped up for months, people will be keen to get outside and enjoy the environment.

Not much at all and they will be treated as a row boat by the BA.

Thorpe Green has a number of issues that would not really make this an easy business to operate from there. A key problem is security. However, I happen to know that there are other locations being sought for these natty vessels.

Why does everybody have the opinion that this is a bad idea? How many of you know the operational area of these bikes? How many of you have met the individuals running this? Mow many of you have been in on the safety discussions with the BA? The MUST be a better place than this? Why? I guarantee you that there is NO better place to operate such things. The first rule of business with anything that isn't supplied remotely is LOCATION. And, I worry, actually, that being tucked away so far off the main drag of Wroxham that the location isn't perfect either, but there aren't many option, frankly. Carnage? Really? Big yellow floats with people high up wearing survival orange life jackets. How's anybody gonna claim they can't see them? Why can't people reserve judgement?

Heck, always willing to stick a downer on it, It would be highly irresponsible for any operator to place somebody who's inebriated into a vessel of any kind and I would doubt that anyone would do this. Corporate manslaughter is an incredibly serious charge. It's a different matter if they get pie-eyed having already rented one and that's out of the control of the operator in every instance whether pedal, paddle or petrol powered ( and diesel).

I wish this enterprise every success. I know they have invested a large amount of money in these vessels and it deserves to work well and, as for location; there's a lot of people suggesting chaos, but there's already occasionally chaos in Wroxham anyway and this enterprise has been discussing its ideas with the BA for some time, so it's not just rocked up without any consideration.

Water heating? From an outboard? Battery Charging? For the starter, maybe. 6/8 litres an hour? At a sedate pace on the broads, 6/8 litres should give you around a day's cruising. Our pod boat with a 10litre tank and 10hp outboard would use typically 8 litres in a day in HIRE where, typically, there are two speeds: full throttle and tied up.

Not really. The DVLA processes vehicles every day of the year in vast numbers. The BA tolls office processes the vast majority of enquiries between Mid March and Mid May each year and I can assure you that the 12th April will be spurring a great many people on. And there's plenty of people (I could name a good few) that perpetually cause problems for the office too which causes delays all round. It's very easy to sit back and criticise whilst having no real knowledge of the workloads. I am sure there could be efficiencies, but unless you're a systems analyst with a working knowledge of the current system and experience of possible solutions. you're not gonna solve it. And, does it even need solving? We're hardly talking about life or death.

Given that you've only just sold Marmalade and that March/April is the busiest time of year for the tolls office which operates with just two or three people with over 10,000 boats to process, maybe you just need to cut them a little slack :-)

The guidance is there and whilst a little opaque, it is clear over going to work. You are allowed to go to work, even if that work isn't local and there's no de-facto definition of "Local" either. Journeys need to be essential. Well, there's so much traffic on the roads to suggest there's a LOT of essential travel too. I have been asked to travel to Yorkshire for some imaging work on a TV pilot show. Thankfully, this is in the week after 12th April, so I would be (currently) well within the law to do this, but could equally do it now as it is "WORK". Any vlogger who has or is building an income from their vlogs would also be considered to be working whilst out making their films. This isn't interpretation of the guidance: it's following it. The interpretation is with people who question the legitimacy of the term "work".

The redevelopment of Ebridge Mill is stunning and it's great to see the canal full and in use along this stretch too.

The North Walsham and Dilham Canal skirts the woods, so it just about qualifies as Broads related!

Please be assured that it's not only private boats that go green.....

This isn't new. Indeed, the yards you mention closed decades ago. The south doesn't have the eye-candy of the North. Its often been seen as the poor relation to the North. That's fine by me 'cos its also a lot quieter, even in busy times and that's won't improve now with the loss of Freedom already and Sandersons at the end of this season.

This issue of having to stand in a centre-cockpit cruiser to get a view is true of many such designs to be absolutely fair. Because the canopy rises and falls on a sloping track so that there a flat(ish) roofline to be able to navigate bridges. The saloon is raised inside too (to accommodate the engine and provide a further raised helm area so the captain can see over the forward roofline), but the rest of the saloon seating is lower and provides hardly any view over the rising sides. The early Alpha centre cockpits got around this with a raised helm and bench seat, with the galley off to starboard at a lower position, but most other designs suffer from this issue.

It's a Bump, Peter, and you know it. The Bascule Bridge just down from you is higher when it's open! :-)

100% right about 12v TVs. If it's an AVtex tele, designed for motorhome use, etc, it will be OK as these have DC to DC converters to regulate the power. If it's one you've picked up from the high street (more irony) that has a 12V input from a transformer, don't go thinking that it's fine on your boat as the transformer brick outputs a constant voltage which, as Smoggy says, is definitely not what your boat's power system will be unless you've had a decent DC to DC converter fitted (most won't).

I would never leave any such electronics on board over winter. The biggest threat to TVs, I think, might be Modified Sine Wave inverters. Or it could have been hirers. Not sure. Let's just say that we replaced more TVs than bilge pumps which also don't seem to like damp conditions.

When I moved to Norfolk in close to 20 years ago, I dreamt of having a quieter, more relaxed life. Then, like an idiot, I started a boat hire company...... I have now ceased to hire boats and life is, finally, quieter. But maybe that's lockdown. It's a wonderful place to be and I love it, but I also love hills and mountains and there aren't enough of them in these parts.

Had to open this as my first thought was that if it wasn't floating, surely that should be the news story.....

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It started foggy but by the time I made it to some woodland, it had burned off. Some nice landscape shots though.

Waterproof grease.